Coastal's NAV Enhancement kit installed.

When Kelly from Coastal Tech called and asked me if I still wanted their NAV Enhancement kit I said sure. It arrived on 1/23/06 (ordered April '05) and I have installed it. Just wanted to make a couple of comments.

Ease of installation- Super easy. Unlike their Auto-Lock kit there are no pictures in the instructions. Really it isn't necessary as it's obvious which plugs to pull out (be sure to make sure the plug are snapped into place). It took less than 5 minutes, considering I was installing it at night in my parent's driveway using a flashlight. When you first power up the there is a screen saying it's loading data (one of the plugs pulled out supplies power to the NAV system). That takes about 20 seconds. The instructions said what would happen, but it was a little unsettling as the MFD was blank for a few seconds. Some information is lost. I normally keep it at 700 feet, map turning as the car turns and no street name. When the map came up for the first time is was set at 300 feet, North up and the street name displayed. It's easy to set it back and no personal POIs were lost.

How it works- If you've seen the demo you know what it's supposed to do. The "I Agree" screen comes up, but after a second or so you see the button change color and it goes away. As for the other part, I can say for a fact that it acts like an automatic button pusher for the NAV "dance." In fact, unlike the demo, you actually see all the screens that you see during the "dance" when you press the DEST button. This happens the first time you press DEST. The bad news is that it won't work for the 2006 models. The good news is that the BT override part must do the same thing. That would mean that if you have the BT override, you'll be able to see the "dance" for that (and hopefully post that to PC ).

Is it worth it?- Wellllll, that's up to you. If have a 2004-2005 and you didn't know about (or were afraid to do) the NAV "dance" AND you really hated having to press "I Agree" every time you first use the NAV, then yes, this is for you. I really didn't mind pushing the "I Agree" every time and I only needed to enter a destination while moving only 2 times since July (when I learned about the NAV "dance"). As for the geek factor it's pretty cool. I agreed to get it partly for closure as I waited so long for it.